O LOVE, what hours were thine and mine,In lands of palm and southern pine; In lands of palm, of orange-blossom,Of olive, aloe, and maize and vine.
What Roman strength Turbia show'dIn ruin, by the mountain road; How like a gem, beneath, the cityOf little Monaco, basking, glow'd.
How richly down the rocky dellThe torrent vineyard streaming fell To meet the sun and sunny waters,That only heaved with a summer swell.
What slender campanili grewBy bays, the peacock's neck in hue; Where, here and there, on sandy beachesA milky-bell'd amaryllis blew.
How young Columbus seem'd to rove,Yet present in his natal grove, Now watching high on mountain cornice,And steering, now, from a purple cove,
Now pacing mute by ocean's rim;Till, in a narrow street and dim, I stay'd the wheels at Cogoletto,And drank, and loyally drank to him.
Nor knew we well what pleased us most,Not the clipt palm of which they boast; But distant colour, happy hamlet,A moulder'd citadel on the coast,
Or tower, or high hill-convent, seenA light amid its olives green; Or olive-hoary cape in ocean;Or rosy blossom in hot ravine,
Where oleanders flush'd the bedOf silent torrents, gravel-spread; And, crossing, oft we saw the glistenOf ice, far up on a mountain head.
We loved that hall, tho' white and cold,Those niched shapes of noble mould, A princely people's awful princes,The grave, severe Genovese of old.
At Florence too what golden hours,In those long galleries, were ours; What drives about the fresh Cascinè,Or walks in Boboli's ducal bowers.
In bright vignettes, and each complete,Of tower or duomo, sunny-sweet, Or palace, how the city glitter'd,Thro' cypress avenues, at our feet.
But when we crost the Lombard plainRemember what a plague of rain; Of rain at Reggio, rain at Parma;At Lodi, rain, Piacenza, rain.
And stern and sad (so rare the smilesOf sunlight) look'd the Lombard piles; Porch-pillars on the lion resting,And sombre, old, colonnaded aisles.
O Milan, O the chanting quires,The giant windows' blazon'd fires, The height, the space, the gloom, the glory!A mount of marble, a hundred spires!
I climb'd the roofs at break of day;Sun-smitten Alps before me lay. I stood among the silent statues,And statued pinnacles, mute as they.
How faintly-flush'd, how phantom-fair,Was Monte Rosa, hanging there A thousand shadowy-pencill'd valleysAnd snowy dells in a golden air.
Remember how we came at lastTo Como; shower and storm and blast Had blown the lake beyond his limit,And all was flooded; and how we past
From Como, when the light was gray,And in my head, for half the day, The rich Virgilian rustic measureOf Lari Maxume, all the way.
Like ballad-burthen music, kept,As on The Lariano crept To that fair port below the castleOf Queen Theodolind, where we slept;
Or hardly slept, but watch'd awakeA cypress in the moonlight shake. The moonlight touching o'er a terraceOne tall Agavè above the lake.
What more? we took our last adieu,And up the snowy Splugen drew, But ere we reach'd the highest summitI pluck'd a daisy, I gave it you.
It told of England then to me,And now it tells of Italy. O love, we two shall go no longerTo lands of summer across the sea;
So dear a life your arms enfoldWhose crying is a cry for gold: Yet here to-night in this dark city,When ill and weary, alone and cold,
I found, tho' crush'd to hard and dry,This nurseling of another sky Still in the little book you lent me.And where you tenderly laid it by:
And I forgot the clouded Forth,The gloom that saddens Heaven and Earth, The bitter east, the misty summerAnd gray metropolis of the North.
Perchance, to lull the throbs of pain,Perchance, to charm a vacant brain, Perchance, to dream you still beside me,My fancy fled to the South again.